Take a look at a website from 5 years ago and try to use it. Web design marketing has come a long way, and things start to look and feel archaic pretty quickly!
It’s now part of the web designer’s job to remain a student part-time. They have to keep learning, keep adapting and keep incorporating the new trends and best practices into their work.
How do you make sure your site feels like it was made for 2018’s users? Simple, make sure these trends are a part of your web design marketing plan, from whiteboard to launch.
User Experience
This is the most important web design trend in the world today. It’s also quite possibly the vastest.
In its most simple terms, user experience is the art and science of anticipating how people are going to use a given page and show them exactly what they need to do, in as few clicks as humanly possible.
It sounds so simple, but to really master this, you need a knowledge of human behavior and psychology, web design, and analytics.
It’s also not a one-and-done task that you ever really complete. Constant testing is required, and so is tweaking based on that research.
As we said, this is an absolutely massive area of web design marketing, but so are the benefits of investing in it. Forrester Research has that reported a 10% jump in a UX score at the highest level can translate into more than $1 billion.
Attention Ratio
Are you giving your audience too many options? If you give them a dozen buttons to push and links to click, they will likely do nothing.
Each page should have a goal, or what’s the point of creating it. And it should only have one purpose, or you’re watering down its effectiveness. Say your goal is sales. You add a nice big “Buy” button next to your item.
It’s got 100% of the user’s attention. But, if you add a “Sign up for our newsletter” button, you can cut that in half. The “Buy” button now has to share 50% of the attention with the newsletter button.
Now, add a “Download our 2018 Catalogue” button and the Buy button is down to 33% of the attention it needs to fulfill your goal.
Keep the ratio to 1 goal: 1 button (or other CTA).
Intent-Based Marketing
Do you really know what your customers want from your website?
The majority of business owners assume they know, and then wonder why their sales funnel is leaking leads and the bounce rate on their website is so high. The businesses that embrace intent-based marketing see higher conversions.
“But we know our key demographics and our target audience,” you might say. That’s great, but even Google has openly stated that relying just on demographics means you risk missing more than 70% of potential mobile shoppers.
Never guess why users come to your website. But always second guess the data that shows why people are coming. Again you need to test everything and constantly try new things.
Microcopy
Pay attention to the little things. More specifically, the 2 or three words you stick on a form or button, which too many people don’t give much thought to.
What if I told you that changing two words could double your conversion rate. Or removing the word “Submit” from a button and replacing it with “Confirm” can send your leads through the roof.
One savvy marketer once changed a button and unlocked 300 million dollars in sales.
Something incredibly small could be creating a huge barrier between you and your customers. This means you need to test all your microcopy and headlines to see what your users respond to.
Responsive and Mobile Design
Google has announced that we’re all officially marketing in a mobile-first world. They are now indexing mobile sites before looking at desktop sites. This will create an even bigger need for mobile and responsive websites.
Mobile design and apps are now the first chapter in the web design marketing 101 textbook, and you need to start here.
Here are the only three things you need to know about your mobile site, right from Google’s mouth:
- About 60% of all your traffic is going to come from a mobile device
- 57% of users won’t recommend a business with a bad mobile site
- 40% of users go straight to a competitor after a bad mobile experience
This means that a bad mobile site is not only doing yourself a huge disservice, you’re also doing a huge favor for your competition. You’re actually funneling leads right to them.
Less is More
Minimalist design has always been a big part of web design marketing, and how we structure each page. But now we’re asking “Do we even need that page?”
We’re seeing a shift towards smaller websites, with all the fat trimmed off.
It’s a move towards a web presence, instead of a website. A lot of business owners are starting to realize that with a Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn page, they really don’t need a lot of these superfluous web pages on their site like:
- Our history
- About us
- Mission and vision
- Our team
These parts are really unlikely to be read by anyone other than someone prepping for a job interview with you and they do nothing to drive your business forward.
These are also often bulky chunks of texts that require the most stakeholder sign off, before they even go live. These means ditching them altogether cuts down on the costs and turnaround time associated with building your site.
The shift is towards more dynamic content and less static pages. These means more blogs and social posts, with fewer pages that sit on your site and do nothing.
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